On the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans – Bourbon and Royal, St. Peter’s and St. Ann’s — in the hotel rooms and in cabs and Ubers and Lyfts, you can feel the tension. A city, a region, infested by ICE and Border Patrol, and an area dependent on an immigrant population to fill the jobs others would not take.
I’m in New Orleans for a few days, a place I’ve been often, to soak up the vibrant jazz scene that stretches from Preservation Hall on St. Peter’s to Snug Harbor on Frenchmen, and beyond.
There are people on the streets, frivolity in the clubs.
But there’s an undercurrent in the conservations with the natives. In early December, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched what it is calling “Catahoula Crunch” with a goal of arresting 5,000 of what it described as “rapists, thieves, gang members, human smugglers and abusers” in New Orleans and its suburbs.
While Homeland Security has not released any data on arrests, reports suggested that of 38 individuals arrested in the first two days of the operation, only a third of had criminal records.
The housekeepers in the hotels, many of whom speak little English and are likely undocumented, appear nervous. A cabbie said that in some hotels, the undocumented immigrants, hard workers who came to New Orleans to escape oppression, were finding places to hide from ICE.
Without these workers, the hotels would be hard pressed to fill positions that help the city, and the state, maintain a robust tourism industry.
Even those documented citizens are fearful. A cabbie said if you are non-white there’s reason to be fearful. He carries his passport, even though he’s been a citizen for decades. His father, a citizen of this country for 50 years, now keeps his passport close.
Rhode Island also has had its share of ICE arrests. According to the Deportation Data Project, 343 undocumented immigrants had been arrested in Rhode Island through the end of July.
The ICE arrests are predicated upon a belief that undocumented immigrants are responsible for a significant number of violent crimes in the United States. But, according to the CATO Institute, undocumented immigrants are about half as likely to be imprisoned as native-born Americans, according to statistics from 2010 to 2023.
Incarceration rates, according to the CATO Institute:
- Native-born Americans: 1,221 per 100,000 individuals.
- Undocumented immigrants: 613 per 100,000.
- Legal immigrants, 319 per 100,000.
Two states track immigrant crime statistics, and they are similar to CATO’s findings. In Texas and Georgia, undocumented immigrants had lower conviction and arrest rates than native-born Texans and Georgians.